


when he saw her there

by FunAndWhimsy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-16 23:54:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20611478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunAndWhimsy/pseuds/FunAndWhimsy
Summary: Shiro rules the lonely realm of the dead; perhaps that's why he finds himself enchanted by the life blooming in daisy chains from Pidge's fingertips. Why no matter how the sun burns after years of staying hidden away in the realm of the dead, he pulls his collar up and his hat brim down and visits her in the meadows she turns bright with flowers. Why he asks her to come home with him.Pidge loves the mystery of him, the coldness in his touch, the novelty of traveling so far from the Earth she gives life to even she struggles to make anything grow. Perhaps that's why she finally says yes.But is it enough?





	when he saw her there

**Author's Note:**

> But even that hardest of hearts unhardened  
Suddenly, when he saw her there  
Persephone in her mother’s garden  
Sun on her shoulders, wind in her hair  
\- Epic III, Hadestown
> 
> Art (at end) by the wonderful [Inkbadger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkbadger). Beta'd by my [epershand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epershand). For the Shiro Rarepair Flash Bang 2019.

Shiro isn't especially suited to the fresh air and the sunshine - one aches in his lungs, one burns his pale skin - but every now and then the dark and the quiet are too much, and he finds himself above, in a broad-brimmed hat with dark glasses to cover his sensitive eyes, thick black clothes to protect him from the sun, stepping carefully through a meadow to find a place to sit in the shade where he won't cause too much damage with his touch. He's been coming up more often, lately, to the same path of now-brown grass under the same tree, watching for her.

She's always wearing sundresses in riots of color, florals splashed against bright backgrounds, and a big straw hat to shade her face from the sun. Even with it, freckles spring up on her nose and cheeks like the wildflowers speckling the meadow; Shiro wants to count them, press his cold fingertips to each one in turn and soak her up like the sun. She tends to the meadow like it's her own private garden, stopping to talk to flowers here and there until they perk up, wilting weeds with a glance, carefully coaxing anything Shiro might have touched with careless fingers. He'd feel guiltier, if she didn't follow the accidental little deaths like a trail right to him.

"Hello again," she says, sinking to her knees with her legs spread across his broad lap. Instead of greeting her, Shiro knocks her hat aside and cups her warm cheeks in his cold hands, draws her in for a sweet kiss. She sighs when he kisses her, always, wraps her arms around his neck and leans against him, skin so warm against his it feels like she might burn him up.

Their kiss becomes desperate so quickly; he slides his hands down her slim body to take her hips in his hands, bunching her skirt under his grip, and she in turn lets go of his neck to unbutton his pants with quick, clumsy movements. He likes to take his time with her, lay her out in the warm grass and press his mouth against her skin until she shakes apart, but it's been longer than usual, this time, and he can't find it in himself to argue with the insistence of her hand guiding him to push inside. She's so wet for him, so ready, her body just takes him in with little effort, and he squeezes her hips hard enough to bruise. The warmth inside of her sets Shiro's entire body aflame, and he fucks up into her in quick strokes, desperate for the way she makes him feel. 

She bites his lip when she comes, whines so sweetly when he keeps thrusting until he follows her over the edge, spills inside her. It's cold, he knows, like the rest of him, and she always shivers when he fills her up, but she's never once complained. 

"Come home with me," he murmurs against her chapped lips, like he always does, and this time instead of laughing, Pidge smiles at him like the sun coming out and says _yes_.

-

Bringing her here was foolish, Shiro knows - has always known - but he can't bring himself to regret it. Pidge walks on the dark, sharp stones with bare feet, hat in hand, laughing at how cold it is and never complaining about how the rocks must be cutting her feet. Her other hand rests on Shiro's arm, and she allows him to guide her carefully away from the worst of it, the new souls who haven't yet adjusted to their fate swirling and screaming between the banks. By the time they make their way down to Shiro's dwelling, the cursed souls who will never know peace will have been sorted out, sent below, and Pidge will only ever need to see the eerie souls of the restful shifting like waves in rivers and lakes spreading in an endless network away from Shiro's home. Her home, their home.

A beautiful flower like her is in danger of wilting down here in the dark, but Shiro trusts she's made of sterner stuff. A queen who deserves a finer kingdom than this by far, but a queen nonetheless.

"It's beautiful," she says, tightening her grip on his arm. Shiro watches her carefully, searches her face for signs of discomfort, disgust, longing to turn around and go back to the sunlight, but all he sees is the wonder in her eyes at the luminescence of fungus in the cracks, the ghastly lighting system of the underground. She passes him her hat, the straw still holding on to some of the heat of the sun, and twists her fingers until a long, thin mushroom appears in her palm. Pidge tucks it behind her ear, and the greenish glow washes out her lovely skin but she's a wonder to behold even so.

"You're beautiful," he says, and she laughs like he's said something funny, not simply revealed the truth that gripped him the first time he chose her meadow for his half-centennial trip above and kept him coming back month by month, then week by week, for more. Shiro leads her down twisting paths, past obstacles meant to keep the living away from the realm of the dead, until they arrive at the massive platform bearing his throne, and the stone archway behind. "Welcome home."

"You didn't," says a voice through the archway, before Pidge can respond. "We _talked_ about this."

Keith appears from out of the darkness, dressed as he would to meet new souls on this side of the river and send them on their way. Intimidating, draped in black, with dark kohl around his eyes, if Shiro didn't know him better. If he weren't rolling his eyes and looking at Shiro like a disappointed parent.

"Pidge, this is Keith," Shiro says, as if Keith hadn't spoken. "Keith, Pidge."

"I know who she is," Keith says, but he sounds more amused than anything. 

"A human?" Pidge asks, as if she knows the quickest way to win Keith over is to make a terrible first impression.

"Not really," Keith says.

"Not anymore," says Shiro, earning a mild glare. He's not particularly concerned; Keith may be against the idea of bringing a goddess of springtime, of life, home to the land of the dead, but there's no way he truly believed this wouldn't happen eventually. And he'll like having someone else here to talk to that isn't dead; it's been a long time. Keith gives him a lazy salute, hops off the platform, and disappears down a dark corridor to get back to work.

"Is he - "

"He'll love you," Shiro says; he's not sure what she was going to ask, but that's the only answer that matters. "Now, would you like a tour of your new home?"

-

The way Pidge arches and writhes at his touch makes Shiro feel all-powerful, like Mighty Alfor shooting lightning from his fingertips right into her veins. He's even stronger than that, though - he doesn't need electricity, just his fingers and tongue and the patience to learn every last inch of her. And she's so eager to teach, to pull his hair and arch her hips and tell him where to move, how deep to go, how hard she needs it, praise spilling from between her lips like she's overflowing. Praise almost as sweet as the nectar that flows over his fingers and tongue in waves when he brings her over the edge.

Pidge shivers, if he doesn't let up after she comes, and long ago he thought that was her body saying _too much_, but he learned quickly there's no such thing. The shivers running up and down her spine shake laughter from her - how happy he makes her, how powerful that is - and she spreads her legs, begging for more even while her cunt twitches around his fingers. It's best then if he moves quickly, crawls up the bed and pushes inside her in one smooth thrust when he can still feel the aftershocks running through her. She nearly purrs when he's fully seated, a sweet shaky moan when his hips press against hers; he can't help but match it.

"Yes," she sighs, tosses her head back and tangles her fingers in his hair. She's warm everywhere, so warm, like he's touching the sun everywhere his skin comes in contact with hers but it doesn't hurt, couldn't possibly hurt. Pidge drives the chill from his fingers, kisses it off his lips, drives it out of the center of him and makes him understand why someone would stand in an open field and tilt their face towards the blazing light.

Shiro presses kisses into her neck, light enough they tickle and she laughs, until he uses his teeth to mark her pretty skin and she sighs, tightens up around him, clenches her fingers in his hair. He knows everything she loves, everything she needs, the pace of his hips matching hers, all the places on her neck where his teeth or lips make her buck and writhe against him, the right words to murmur in her ear to feel her spine nearly melting into the bed. He kisses her lips and swallows all the sweet noises she makes for him, takes them as greedily as he takes the heat of her, and she pulls his hair so hard it jolts at the base of his spine.

_More_, she can't say, when he won't let her pull away from his kiss, but he feels it in every inch of her, hitches her hips up and pulls her closer so he can grind into her so deeply she'll feel it in her fingertips, in her toes. Her hands slip from his hair to his shoulders, blunt nails scratching at his skin. Shiro thinks of flowers growing in their wake, bursting out of him like all the feelings he can't possibly contain when he's with her.

-

Pidge's hand is small and warm in his own as he leads her down yet another tunnel, the fungus lining the walls and the souls swirling in the river alongside casting haunting shadows over her pretty face. She lets go sometimes, to crouch down and wiggle her fingers in the river, or to drift over to a wall and inspect a kind of moss that doesn't grow as high up as the palace, but she drifts back to him and takes his hand again like they're tied by invisible strings. Shiro's face might split apart from all the smiling; his palm must have the imprint of hers burned on it like a brand by now. Pidge squeezes his hand, and smiles up at him, eyes glittering in the eerie light, and Shiro wishes he were a flesh-and-blood man just so he could die at her feet and enrich the soil for one of her brilliant gardens.

"What does it feel like?" he asks instead, because Keith always makes a face when Shiro tries to talk about that kind of thing with him and while Pidge is no Keith, he'd hate to ruin the mood.

"Haven't you ever put your hand in?"

Not as often, in the weeks since she joined him down here. 

"I do," he says, "but I have to. I can feel their emotions, sort of, but mostly so I can know if something's wrong, if someone caught in the current when they should have been sorted elsewhere, or if an external force is trying to get in to mess with things, stuff like that."

"I bet that's interesting." Pidge squeezes his hand again, surprising strength in her grip, and pulls a little as they near a corner because she hasn't been down this far and gets excited at every new turn. "There's still life in them. Only a little, less the farther we get from the palace, but it must take them some time to fully shed the residual energy. It's the only place I can really feel it."

"Not from the plants?"

"It's faint," she says. "And different from what I'm used to. Up above I'd think they were dying, but everything's so dead down here it's almost like they're reaching for me."  
Shiro knows the feeling, of the moss and the fungi and the sunflowers on the surface that tilt towards her as she drifts through her fields, and there's something peaceful in knowing he's not alone in how desperately he yearns for her but she doesn't exactly sound at peace.

"Are you," he begins, but falters; it's a question he should have asked earlier, should be asking more often, after bringing her somewhere so poorly suited to her nature, so opposite the very essence of her. "Are you alright, down here? Are you happy?"

Pidge steps away a bit and lets go of his hand, her warmth sapping away so quickly it nearly makes him shiver. She smiles at him again, but it's not quite right, and twists her clever fingers the way he's watched her do a thousand times before. Flowers bloom from her fingertips, rich reds and purples and pure, pristine white, the colors she always selects for him, and their stems twist together in an intricate pattern until she's holding a circlet so familiar he sometimes sees it as part of his reflection even when he hasn't seen her for months.

"I love it here," she says, and holds the circlet out for him to take; it withers away in his fingers as soon as she lets go. "I'd just like to be able to make a proper crown for my King."

-

The heavy bags slung over Shiro's shoulders and hanging from his fists make his muscles strain, but he can't quite bring himself to mind. When Pidge sees what he's done, her smile will light up the room like the sun itself chose to dip underground for a few brief moments, so wide it'll look like her face will split right in half, and it's hard to care about much else when a reward like that is in reach. Sore arms will be a distant memory when he can once again lay her down among a riot of flowers the way she deserves.

"I want to renegotiate our contract." Keith isn't quite so distracted by thoughts of his reward, which is fair, since Shiro didn't offer him one. He doesn't have anything to offer he doesn't already give Keith freely - time above, the freedom to spend his days as he pleases, the thousand other things Shiro's supposed to restrict in an arrangement like theirs.

"We don't follow the contract," Shiro says. "And I said you didn't have to come."

"I always have to come if you're going to be dealing with mortals," Keith says. "You scare them."

"And I appreciate it," Shiro says. "Are you still mad I brought her down here?"

Keith rolls his eyes and busies himself shifting his armload so he can open the door so he doesn't have to answer right away. Shiro watches his back, the set of his head, the way his street clothes fall so strangely on the frame Shiro's become used to seeing draped in loose, flowing fabric. He and Keith haven't been on the opposite side of anything since the day Shiro brought him here; it unsettles him, to be there now.

"I wasn't mad," Keith says. "I'm not mad. I don't want you to get your heart broken."

He sets his trays of seedlings on the floor and sets about lighting torches, illuminating the room but deepening the shadows into the corners. The flickering light touches on stacks of unused pottery, collecting dust and yearning to be useful. Most of them drifted down here with souls who clung a little too tightly to their mortal lives, to their worldly possessions, unused to being forgotten, neglected. Shiro sets his own load down, bags and bags of fresh soil, and moves to help Keith drag tables out of corners and into the center of the room. 

"I don't know why you're so certain that's going to happen."

"Yeah you do," Keith says. "She's a goddess of life and you've taken her to the realm of the dead, you'd have to be pretty stupid not to see the problem there."

"It doesn't have to be a problem," Shiro says, like he isn't worried about the same thing, like he didn't make a rare trip to the surface to _shop_ just to try and fix the equation a little. Pidge is clever, and took the time to think this through, and she's too stubborn to have said yes if she didn't want to. She loves him enough to be here, he loves her enough to try to give her what she needs, and it's all going to work out fine.

"It's not like I _want_ it to be a problem," Keith says. 

Shiro carefully sets down his bag of soil, the pot he was filling only half-full, and crosses to the table where Keith is slowly filling his own set of pots. Keith only talks when he's ready and runs if he thinks he's being pushed, so Shiro just waits. He helps Keith work, of course, filling pots, tamping them down so they look nice, distributing them around the room on tables and floors even though Pidge will probably want to arrange it all herself. They're nearly done, dirt-stained and sweat-soaked, when Keith finally sighs and leans against the wall.

"James changed his mind about letting you make him immortal again," he says, quiet and sullen.

Shiro frowns. "He's going to have to decide soon."

"He's not _that_ old," Keith says; it must be automatic because he almost immediately bites his lip, eyes going distant. Keith's been with James since they were young, but then Shiro took Keith, and James just celebrated his eightieth birthday, and if James' time comes before Shiro can make arrangements there's not much even he can do. "He says immortality sounds lonely."

"It is," Shiro says.

"Lonelier if you invite someone in just for them to leave."

Shiro rests a hand on Keith's shoulder, glad all his clothes are black so the streaks of dirt he's surely leaving won't show. He can't find the right words to say; reassuring him Pidge isn't leaving isn't really what he needs, and promising him James is going to come around isn't something Shiro can do. All he can offer is a strong hand, and a hug if Keith wants it, and the steady unspoken promise that no matter how alone they get they'll always have each other.

-

Pidge is an independent creature by nature; she's gone weeks without speaking a word to another person, too busy focusing on the subtleties of the right breeze through the trees to make the rustling of the leaves soft and soothing, the right balance of flowers dotting the landscape to create the sweetest perfume, the right bursts of weeds to make gardening feel like good, satisfying work. Sometimes she'd spend whole days distracted debating the finer points of sunshine and shadows with Hunk, or playing with some new invention of her father's, talking the dryads into moving trees around to help her mother create more satisfying hunts, helping Matt lay traps for weary travelers, but not often. She likes her solitude, and to be the only one who decides what her day is going to look like, and to dance from choice to choice never explaining anything to anyone.

"Are you planning on getting out of bed today?" Shiro asks, his voice slow and sleepy and so close to her ear she can feel it. She could ask him the same thing, of course, but he never seems to be in much of a hurry to be away from her the way she always has with other people. Perhaps it's rubbing off on her; there's so much to explore, there's the potted garden to tend, deeper and deeper tunnels likely full of stranger and stranger growing things, but right here in this bed there's Shiro and he seems to easily outweigh all the rest.

"Give me one good reason," she says. His answering laugh is low, rumbling in his chest, and he presses it against the back of her neck in a soft kiss.

"I couldn't possibly."

"Then no, I'm not."

Shiro laughs again, lips still pressed to her skin, and Pidge sighs happily, wriggles back a little as if she could possibly get any closer to him. The dense moss she's taken to growing on their bed is soft against her skin, the movement of her legs kicking up a little of the raw, earthy smell, and Shiro's solid body is cool enough it raises goosebumps down her spine. Pidge is a creature of delicate petals, of the tiny spines of cacti, of sweetly-scented breezes and other ephemeral things, and the sheer physicality of being here with him still overwhelms her.  
-

"I don't have anything against you," Keith says. "But you're going to leave, and it's going to crush him."

"You say that like you know." Pidge thinks about the odd way he and Shiro talk around what Keith is to be able to live down here, not a mortal and not a God, and his quiet gaze that feels like it's seeing right through her even though he hardly ever seems to be looking at her directly, and squints at him suspiciously. "Are you a Fate? Is that it?" 

Gods aren't quite so beholden to them as mortals, but things have a way of working out in the direction a Fate suggests one way or the other. She's always hated listening to them, hated the idea that someone might know her better than she knows herself, that someone might see where she's going when she can't.

"Oh," Keith says, and blinks a couple times, surprised. "No, I'm just - I don't know, exactly, but it's not that. I can just see what's right in front of my eyes. Life is your whole thing, and the only thing we have here is death, I don't need to see the future to figure out how that eventually turns out."

"It's not all you have," Pidge says; there are the varieties of luminescent fungi, the thick, soft moss, the struggling, stubborn flowers she's nursing to life in the nursery Shiro and Keith set up for her. Even the souls swirling in the rivers have a sort of almost-life about them, like the flowers Shiro killed on his visits before she came down here. She can't reach for these and coax them back to life, of course, but there are embers not yet gone out she finds fascinating.

"And when you get tired of mushrooms, or wasting all your energy on getting a single bloom from those sickly things you keep in pots in the palace?"

"I've had a long time to think about this," Pidge says. "He's been asking for hundreds of years. I know what I'm doing, and I know what I want. I don't care what you think, I'm not going anywhere, and you're just going to have to get used to that."

Pidge isn't sure what she expects from him, but it's not the quick glint in her eyes that has her almost expecting him to laugh, or the almost-smile quirk of her lips. He's been challenging her since he got here and now that she's pushing back, he's...smiling?

"Prove it," he says, mildly, and turns back to his work tending the river of souls.

-

"I'm not leaving without her," echoes a voice from way up the path. A familiar voice. A _very_ familiar voice. Huh.

"If you weren't a God you wouldn't be leaving here at all, goat legs," Keith says.

Shiro straightens up in his seat a little and Pidge moves to get off his lap but he squeezes her waist so she stays. If he wants her to be any kind of Queen, like he keeps saying, she should probably get her own throne that isn't. But, then, Shiro's wearing the crooked flower crown she wove for him earlier to celebrate her garden blooming, so his idea of a strong image of powerful royalty isn't generally what Pidge expects. 

The very familiar person that goes with the very familiar voice appears out of the shadows on the path, hooves clicking on the rough stones, quarterstaff at the ready. Keith is half a step behind him, his own sickle drawn. So whatever this is, it can't be...good.

"I don't know exactly when you lost your goddamn mind," Matt says, striding up to the dais like he's really serious about bashing Shiro's face in, "but you better get it back _right now_ and let my sister go."

"Matt - " Pidge says.

"Try something," Keith says, voice gone dark and cold. "I dare you."

"Keith," Shiro says, holding his hand up in warning. "Matt? What are - Pidge can go anywhere she wants."

Matt gestures between the two of them with his staff, eyebrows raised, like somehow Pidge sitting in Shiro's lap or Shiro's hand on her waist is proof of something nefarious. 

"I'm not trapped here," Pidge says. "I chose it. What's going on?"

"Our parents think you were _kidnapped_, Pidge, you tell me."

"I don't kn - " Pidge stops. It doesn't make sense, they know where she is, and that she's here by choice, because she left a note. She did leave a note, right, or - or she started to get up after telling Shiro yes, and he growled and rolled her on her back in the dirt and made love to her again in the dirt, and then...oh, then he opened up the Earth and brought them both down here. "I didn't - I meant to leave a note."

Matt relaxes almost immediately, lowers his staff and drops his shoulders. He's smiling, now, a wry smile she's way more used to than his battle-ready fight-for-her-honor face.

"_Pidge_," he says, fond and frustrated, and shakes his head. "Why do you have to be so Pidge about everything?"

"Wait," Shiro says; he's gone a little tense beneath her, and his voice is strained. "You didn't tell anyone you were leaving?"

"I was distracted," she says. "You're very distracting."

Even amid the chaos, and the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Pidge can take a half-second to appreciate how cute Shiro is when he blushes, how easy it is to make him.  
"Hunk said he saw you come down here," Matt says, "and that he hasn't seen you since. And you're always outside, so if _he_ hasn't seen you..."

"Hunk's a gossip," Pidge grumbles, and all three of them give her the same incredulous look. Wow, she fucked up this time. _Really_ fucked up; carelessly starting a feud between a couple of other Gods, even relatively chill ones...what is she, a mortal? It's so easy to set something terrible in motion, and so hard to stop it. "I didn't - I'm sorry."

"There isn't any spring, without you," Matt says, gentle. "There's only so much Hunk and the rest of us can do. It's cold, the flowers are all dying, _crops_ are dying. I - please, will you come back with me?"

"I'm happy here," Pidge says; it comes out quiet, shaky, a little petulant. Shiro squeezes her waist, harder this time, and she looks up into his warm gray eyes, the soft smile he's giving her even though he's obviously frustrated. Two seconds of bad planning and she's going to lose this forever.

"Not forever," Matt says. "Just so our parents know you're okay, and we can plan for how to handle the world if you're going to stay down here permanently."

"That seems more than fair," Shiro says, and pushes her a little until she stands up. "If you could give us a minute."

Matt nods, and Shiro rises behind her, almost herds her through the stone archway behind the dais. Normally he'd just scoop her up right off his lap and carry her; normally he isn't upset with her. But his hand on her shoulder is steady as he leads her to their bedroom, and when they arrive and she turns to face him his eyes are soft and gentle.

"I didn't - "

"It's alright," he says. 

"It's not."

Shiro laughs a little, thin and sad, and wraps his big arms around Pidge to pull her into a chilly hug. She pushes her face against his chest, like maybe she can just phase into him and no one can take her away; the world can solve its problems without her. 

"It won't take long," Shiro says. "You made a mistake, but you're clever, you'll fix it in no time, and then you'll come right back here where you belong."

He doesn't sound so sure, and for a moment all Pidge can see is Keith's face, the furrow in his brow and the frown on his lips when he told her she wouldn't stick around like he _knew_. She shakes her head a little to clear it, and Shiro mistakes the gesture and lets go of her, backs away to give her some space. 

"I will," she says. "You'll barely have time to miss me."

His smile just gets sadder, and she can't bear to look at it so she goes up on her toes to pull him into a kiss. Shiro wraps his arms around her again, pulls her body against his, and kisses her like it might be his last chance and he has to make it memorable. To be fair, that's always how he kisses her, every part of him thrown into making her feel cherished, but it's more intense this time, too intense. Pidge has to pull away just to catch her breath, and when she does he steps back, out of her reach.

"You should go," he says, and she just nods and turns away, letting the sight of his sad eyes and soft smile and flower crown knocked askew burn itself into her memory. His cloak is on a hook by the door, and without really thinking she reaches out and grabs it, folding the fabric and clutching it to her chest. It smells like the underworld, like dust and Shiro and moss and their life together, and it might be the only thing giving her the strength to take one step, and another, and finally walk away from him.

-

Matt had mentioned the cold, but Pidge is so used to the chill in the realm of the dead she hadn't really thought about it. The wind hits her like a brick wall the second she steps out of the portal, though, knocks the wind out of her for a second. She'd only taken Shiro's cloak as a silly whim, thinking she might add it to the pile of blankets on her bed or something, but she's glad for that silliness now as she wraps the heavy fabric over her shoulders. It's difficult to walk with so much of it pooling at her feet, but it's not like they need to go very far. 

"Wow," she says, quiet in the rush of the wind.

"Apparently you're kind of important," Matt says, and laughs a little. His laugh is usually contagious but it doesn't quite catch this time. Shiro sent them up under his favorite shade tree, and the meadows where they used to meet stretch away into the distance in a drab blanket of browns and yellows and sickly greens instead of pinks and reds and vibrant purples. Barren trees, barren shrubbery, a hint of brush-fire smoke lingering in the air; Pidge stumbles and trips on the hem of Shiro's cloak so badly Matt has to catch her arm and keep her upright as they walk because she can't quite manage to watch where she's going. Pidge has been surrounded by death for so long but this is somehow so much worse. "Hey, it's fine. It's going to be okay."

"I just didn't - I didn't _know_."

"No one did. Mom used to do what you do, she thought she'd just be able to pick it up but apparently once you pass that power on by creating a new god you don't, y'know, get it back. And Hunk kept telling us not to worry, it wouldn't be too bad, because I guess he didn't realize how much harder it is to keep everything warm once all the plant insulation, or whatever, died off. It didn't get like this right away, it's been slow, just kind of one piece going at a time. It was kind of nice for a while, all the crunchy leaves and cool breezes."

"I would've - "

"Kept stringing Shiro along for another few hundred years?"

"Probably," Pidge says, but she can't quite match the lightness of his tone, the laughter in his voice. Only seeing Shiro once in a while when he could get to the surface, and only as long as his long sleeves and wide-brimmed hat could keep him comfortable in the sun, was becoming unbearable. She made her choice because she wanted to, of course, but also because she felt she might tear into pieces if she didn't decide soon. She might have chosen wrong - or, if she'd known what would happen, if she'd sent him away and put a stop to it because the consequences were too dire, would that have been choosing wrong? She's been so happy with him, he seems so happy with her.

Matt throws his arm over her shoulders and squeezes, a comforting little half-hug that warms Pidge so suddenly and so completely it's like the sun is shining down on her again. If Matt says things are going to work out, she's going to choose to believe him. 

The front door of the home she left radiates coziness, as it always has - dark, solid wood, one of her father's overly complex inventions in place of a knocker or bell, the frosted glass window filled with hazy yellow light. Right now, though, it also seems to radiate all the anxious energy of two parents who just spent months believing her lost, injured, kidnapped, and all her own anxious energy in anticipation of a reunion that might not be as happy as they expect. Pidge can't quite bring herself to reach for the knob, frozen in place on the steps.

Matt, as he always does, saves her, squeezes her shoulder again and reaches for the door himself.

"I'm right here," he says, as the door swings open, and Pidge clings to it like a lifeline in the ensuing chaos.

-

"I'm seven hundred and fifteen years old," Pidge says, when she hears the crunching of Matt's hooves in the dry grass behind her, "and I'm _grounded_."

"I'm sorry," Matt says, folding himself up almost gracefully to sit beside her. "This isn't what I expected."

"I know."

"If you'd just _told_ someone - "

"Do you think they would have reacted any differently if I asked first? That they would have let me turn around and run back to the field knowing what I was planning?"

Matt sighs and nudges her knee with his own. "I wish you'd told _me_."

"I should have," she says. "Once I decided to go I just needed to be gone, you know? I'd been holding myself back for so long."

Pidge twists her fingers, simple, idle movements, and within seconds there's a flower crown in her hand, lush and beautiful. It's so easy up here, just like breathing, or blinking, even with everything so wilted away; it feels good, but she misses the challenge. She frowns in concentration and barely, just barely, manages to coax a few of the luminescent mushrooms into the crown, small and weak but as beautiful as the blooms. Matt smiles at her, crooked and sad, when she puts it on his head. It won't wilt when she leaves; not that she's going anywhere anytime soon. 

Someone else is coming up behind them, footsteps so quiet Pidge only knows it because she can feel the grass falling flat beneath their feet. A soft glow falls over them a moment later, warm, lively yellow that makes the light from Matt's crown look sickly. 

"Your parents said you might be out here," Hunk says. "Is this the apologize to Pidge party?"

"If you do it good enough, you get a crown," Matt says, and Hunk seems to take that as an invitation and sits on Pidge's other side. He gives off such heat she can barely help but lean towards him, even if she's not sure she's ready to stop being mad yet. It's exhausting being this angry.

"I never said - "

"I was kidnapped," she says. "I know. I don't blame you."

It's mostly true. True enough for now, anyway, and most of her is ready to believe it. He's Hunk, and he did what Hunk does - sees nearly everything, and never turns down a request for help. 

"So, weird question," he says, "but did you eat anything down there?"

"It was six months," Pidge says. "Look, I know how you get, but I think I need some time before I'm ready to discuss underworld cuisine with you."

Hunk sighs, long and heavy, and shares a look she can't quite read with Matt over her head. Matt just shrugs, his familiar _it's Pidge, what're you gonna do?_ face on, and Pidge is about to wind up to start giving them shit about how she's kind of having a crisis here and if they're not going to be nice to her they can just go fuck right off when Hunk cuts her off before she can begin.

"I'm just saying, the underworld is kind of its own separate thing, and it's designed to keep itself going without needing interference from anything outside. So you can't just take stuff out, because it can't replace it. You can leave, because you're not part of the ecosystem, but you couldn't take a to-go plate."

"I didn't - "

"And if you eat something, part of it stays with you - the nutrients, the fat, the protein in your muscles - so you kind of become a human - or Goddess - to-go plate."

Matt frowns. "Then he shouldn't have let me take you in the first place."

"He doesn't enforce the rules," Pidge says; she's still grumpy, still in the mood to pout, but Hunk's optimism is poking holes in her little bad mood bubble and thinking of what a soft touch Shiro is has her almost smiling. "Most of them, anyway. He's got this whole 'death is inevitable enough without help, the afterlife is miserable enough without loopholes' thing."

"I know you want to go back, Pidge," Matt says. "But look around; if he takes you back and won't let you leave again, this is just going to get worse."

"He won't," she says, and for some reason it makes her want to laugh. She could beg at Shiro's feet for him to be a stickler for the rules just this once, and he might do it for her, but he'd hate it, and certainly nothing short of begging would get him to kidnap her for real. This plan - if that's what Hunk's trying to present it as, and not just helpful information - is a non-starter, and all because Shiro's just too good.

"But," Hunk says, "if we could figure out how to stabilize things, so you being gone doesn't cause quite so many problems, anyone who wanted to keep you here permanently would have to contend with the fact that you belong to the underworld. Maybe someone willing to put a little pressure on, since literally everyone knows what a pushover the actual king of the underworld is."

Pidge, surprising herself and everyone else, launches herself at Hunk and throws her arms around his neck, fully over being angry. He laughs and hugs her back, big strong arms and tight squeeze and the warm glow of him bathing her in light, and he only lets her go when she starts trying to wriggle free so she can get at the notebook in her pocket.

"Okay," she says, flipping to the first empty page. "So how do we fix the world?"

-

Keith is dressed like Pidge has only seen him once before, in his dark jeans and band t-shirt and studded belt and bright red sneakers and fingerless gloves, instead of in his cool imposing overseer-of-the-dead robes that flap menacingly even if there isn't any wind, but he still manages to look intimidating. The scythe helps, though she's not sure what he did with it earlier in the day when he was running whatever mysterious errands left him blushing and trying not to smile when she asked where he was.

"These laws aren't new," Keith says. with a set to his jaw so like the day Shiro brought her home and all Keith had to say was _you didn't_ Pidge almost loses track of the conversation. "This isn't some trick."

"I'm aware of the rules," Colleen says, jaw set just as firmly. In another circumstance Pidge would probably be loving watching the two most stubborn people she's ever known fight something out. "I'm just saying given what's at stake, this needs to be a special case."

"It already is. Shiro could've sent me to take her back anytime, and you would never need to know. The time to set things right is a courtesy. This conversation is a courtesy."  
Pidge kicks him under the table; he's laying it on too thick. Her mom isn't the enemy, just stressed out and a little overbearing sometimes, but Keith's too used to the person across the table wanting to cheat death, to take advantage of Shiro's softness or Keith's lack of any actual power that doesn't come from Shiro's backing. Asking him was a risk, but she knows he wants her to get back to Shiro as badly as she wants to be there. 

"Okay," Colleen says, but not to Keith; she's looking at Pidge. "What's actually going on here?"

"I'm trying to - "

"Not you," she says. "My daughter."

"I want to go back," Pidge says. 

"I know," Colleen says, eyes going soft. "I know this is hard, and I know it's not fair. But I have a responsibility, and so do you, to the planet and to the mortals on it. I would _love_ to be able to tell you to go follow your heart, I'm not a monster, but not when the end result is all the life here dying in a deep freeze. I want you to have everything you ever want, Pidge, but it's just not possible this time."

"What if everyone dying isn't the end result?"

"Then we wouldn't be having this conversation," Colleen says. "Does it matter?"

Pidge slides her notebook across the table, so it nearly falls in her mother's lap. It's stuffed with extra pages, a little waterlogged from Lance's contributions about the tides and what the new cycle will do to the water, flowers growing out of the binding because that's what happens sometimes when Pidge concentrates too hard. 

"I think I can fix it," Pidge says.

Colleen quirks an eyebrow - she's no stranger to overstuffed notebooks, usually in Sam's messy scrawl, but Pidge usually guards her work a little more carefully - and begins flipping through.

"Honey," she says, after a silence that stretches out so long Keith starts fidgeting in his seat, bored or picking up on Pidge's anxiety or both, "this is...very big."

"And very good?"

"I don't know," Colleen says. "It's just very big."

"Lance had this really cool idea," Pidge says, "called 'snow'. People are gonna love it."

Colleen stands up, notebook in hand, her brow furrowed in concentration and her free hand grasping for a pen like she's going to pull one out of thin air. It's a good sign, if her mother's interested enough to want to cross things out in bright red and fix them. Shiro figured out how to bring life to the realm of the dead for her, and she's actually going to pull off paying him back by changing the way the entire world works. 

"So glad I could help," Keith says, a matching wry twist in his smile and his voice, but his eyes are glowing because he wanted this to work as much as Pidge did, even if it was mostly for Shiro's benefit and not her own. Still, she's growing on him, she's pretty sure, and not just because when she shoves him a little she leaves an orchid blooming on his sleeve.

-

"I know," Keith says, and pats Shiro's head clumsily, as if Shiro hasn't seen him petting Cerberus and doesn't know how affectionate he can be when he chooses. Shiro frowns, though he's already pouting - Keith's words, as far as Shiro is concerned he's being quite stoic - so deeply there's not really any room for it on his face. It's a symbolic frown.

"I didn't say anything."

"No," Keith says, "but it's been more than ten minutes since the last time you said she's taking too long, so I knew it was coming."

"I'm not that bad," Shiro says, though he's self-aware enough to know he's lying to them both. At least neither one of them are stupid enough to believe it. "And she _is_ taking too long."

Keith drops his hand to Shiro's shoulder and squeezes, solid and comforting even though Shiro absolutely deserves the _you're being ridiculous_ level of half-assed comfort Keith's been giving him.

"She rewrote the laws of nature for you," he says, voice soft and a little awed the way it always is when he mentions that; it makes Shiro want to go back in time and hurt all the people who made Keith think that kind of love was impossible, to steal him away from all of that. Again. Maybe three or four more times. "There's still a few bugs to work out."  
Shiro grumbles but it's mostly for show, and leans back in his chair, careful of the wilted, fragile flower crown hung over one of the posts. Keith's hand stays on his shoulder, almost as cold as Shiro's own, and though it's still a comfort the chill makes him yearn for Pidge and the sunshine-heat of her, the way her touch seems to burn through all his layers of clothing to brand his skin. So much more of his life has been composed of days without her than days with, he should be more accustomed to these summers alone, less adrift in her absence. 

He feels it in the back of his mind, first, just a gentle tug, a hint of something. Could easily be a human or animal walking along one of the concealed portals he leaves ready in case he needs to move quickly, something that happens often enough, but then he feels it in his spine, too, the shiver of someone probing at his defenses. Pushy, and insistent, and the recognition must show on his face because by the time he feels the tingle in his hands of her request for entry, Keith is laughing and walking away, putting distance quickly between himself and the impending reunion.

Shiro reaches, and the portal opens, and a riot of warmth and color falls into his lap, laughing flushed and breathless from the rush of the ground falling away beneath her feet. Her straw hat drifts down behind her, landing several feet away, surrounded by loose petals from the mass of flowers she holds in her arms. Her skin is sun-kissed and freckled, and she smells of flowers and cut grass and warm breezes; the sheer energy surrounding her is enough to make Shiro dizzy, as it always has, as it always will.

"I was picking flowers," she says, not a hint of apology in her voice (not a hint of apology necessary). "I lost track of time."

"It doesn't matter," he says, though she knows him well enough to know he's been counting the seconds, and she'll be making fun of him with Keith later while they pretend to think he isn't lurking around the corner listening in. "You're here now."

"I'm here," she agrees, and sighs when Shiro cups her cheek just to feel the warmth of her against his palm.

"Welcome home," he says, and kisses her so deeply and for so long neither one of them manages to spare thought for the flowers crushed between their chests.

**Author's Note:**

> The pantheon, for reference, though for the sake of brevity much of this didn't make it in:  
Shiro - Hades  
Pidge - Persephone  
Keith - a shade  
Matt - Pan  
Hunk - Helios  
Colleen - Demeter  
Sam - Hephaestus  
Lance - Poseidon  
Allura - Athena  
Alfor - Zeus
> 
> Approximately half of the Hadestown references, aside from the title, are unintentional.


End file.
